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The White House has released enough Benghazi documents to cover half a football field

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Christophe Haubursin
Christophe Haubursin was a senior producer for the Vox video team. Since joining the team in 2016, he has produced for Vox’s YouTube channel and Emmy-nominated shows Glad You Asked and Explained.

The State Department turned over 900 pages of Hillary Clinton’s private emails Friday to a House special committee investigating the Benghazi attacks of 2011. The documents join 40,000 pages the White House has handed over to Congress already. The volume is enormous.

Benghazi documents would cover half of a football field.

Benghazi documents would cover half of a football field.

The volume of information produced by this case ends up giving comfort to both sides of the fight: Republicans believe a smoking gun must be hidden in reams of documents, while Democrats point to the continued demand for documents, given how much has been made available and how little wrongdoing has been found, as proof this is a partisan witch hunt.

Regardless, the investigation will continue on Capitol Hill and dog Clinton on the trail as she campaigns for the Democratic nomination.

Correction: Originally Vox posted a graphic that over-represented the number of football fields these documents would cover. The correct figure is about half of a football field. The original error was produced by miscalculating the square footage of a single document. The new graphic is accurate. We regret this error.

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